Rioting in the Handsworth Lozells area of Birmingham in 1985. Photograph: Alamy

The ongoing riots have brought back memories of the unrest in many inner-city areas of England during the 1980s. As the fallout and the inquiries begin, those heading them would do well to keep in mind one of the major lessons learned at that time, when trust broke down almost completely between black communities and police. Indeed, it was often a particular incident between a local resident and the police that sparked the unrest in the 1980s.

• The first of two riots in Brixton, in 1981, began after a local black man had been stabbed but was perceived not to have received adequate medical attention having been taken into police custody. Almost 300 police officers and 60 civilians were injured in the unrest that ensued.

• Four years later in the same area, 43 civilians and 10 police officers were injured in unrest that followed the shooting of Cherry Groce as police officers searched her home in connection with a robbery. Groce was shot in her bed apparently without warning, and left paralysed from the waist down.

• Just days later, on the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, Cynthia Jarrett – who was, like Groce, a black mother – collapsed and died from a stroke after four police officers raided her home. In the unrest that followed, 250 police officers were injured.

The incidents that provoked the unrest in each of these examples would be tragic and deeply worrying in any context. But in the specific contexts of Brixton, Tottenham and other inner-city areas with large black populations in the 1980s, such incidents were perceived as the final straw in a relationship between the police and black communities that was characterised by mutual resentment and a deep distrust. It could have been any number of incidents that acted as the spark.

• In Toxteth in Liverpool, for example, unrest was triggered in 1981 after police pursued a man they wrongly suspected had stolen a motorbike, then arrested a nearby student for assault when he attempted to intervene. The unrest led to 450 police officers being injured and 70 buildings being demolished.

• Four years later in Handsworth in Birmingham, the arrest of a local resident for a traffic offence led to two days of disturbances, causing 122 injuries and the deaths of two innocent civilians.

In a sense, what mattered was not the initial spark, however tragic or seemingly trivial. In these areas, the relationship between the police and particularly young black men had been stretched to breaking point.

In 1978, a local community group commissioned a bus driver to go around Handsworth and interview members of the black community about their feelings towards the police. The results of the survey were startling. Respondents talked of the police treating black youth like "we are still slaves", "pushing people around" and "treating them like dirt". In the late 1970s and early 1980s, young black men in particular felt victimised by the use of the "sus" law, which enabled police officers to stop and search members of the public even if they had no hard evidence that a crime had been committed. In Brixton in 1981, days before the unrest, the police launched the now infamous Operation Swamp, a plan to cut crime in the area by "swamping" the area with police and arresting thousands of people. The government-sponsored report into what happened in Brixton, carried out by Lord Scarman, prompted a change in emphasis from the police, but the onset of "community policing" generally left black communities feeling even more surveyed and spied upon.

In the clamour by politicians, media and police alike to dismiss what happened this week as the acts of "mindless thugs", it is worth keeping in mind that riots don't tend to happen without a reason. The tragic loss of Mark Duggan's life requires a thorough investigation from the IPCC. But the aim in the coming weeks should also be to go beyond the initial spark, and try to learn more about the relationship between the police and the community, and the ways in which this can be improved.

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